There's obviously the high-definition experience. Burnout Revenge looks great on 720p and surprisingly good on 1080i as well. You would think that a game as fast as Burnout with sparks and busses flying left and right would have a bit of trouble with the interlaced scan, but we didn't notice a problem at all. On the same TV on a different input, we had the Xbox version of Burnout Revenge running at the same time. Head to head, you can see that Burnout was born for a high-definition setup. The colors are so crisp and vibrant that they blow away the Xbox version, which already looked great.

The sound effects are blistering and fit the style of the game perfectly. A great example is the Crashbreaker explosion. Remember in the Kurt Russell movie Backdraft when the fire is hiding in the walls of a house and the unsuspecting victim comes home, jiggles his keys, unlocks the front door and the fire sucks up the oxygen from outside before blowing the poor attorney into the windshield of his car 20 yards away? Hiss-BOOM! That's a Crashbreaker explosion, and it rocks. The positional sound is great as well and a fantastic incentive to juice up that surround sound system.

Guns don't kill people. 200-mph sports cars kill people.

The same licensed soundtrack returns and it still completely rocks. It's a techno/punk mix, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a song that doesn't make you want to tap your foot. You've also got to give props to Steve Schnur, EA's Worldwide Executive of Music and Audio. When he was signing the 40-plus songs for this edition of EA Trax, he knew which songs were going to be hits before they were hits. Sure enough, months later, we're driving to work and hear not one, not two, but three consecutive songs from Burnout Revenge on the radio. Unwritten Law, Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard... the list goes on. Addmittedly, EA has put out a few stinkers in the EA Trax department, but this mix complements the hair-raising action of Burnout Revenge.

Updated graphics and sound aside, Criterion spent 60 percent of the development cycle upgrading the online modes with the new Live Revenge and Save and Share features. While not a giant leap forward, Live Revenge is a step in the right direction in terms of next-generation online play. At the beginning of each online race, the game will flash to the overall points leader. He'll start in the lead because, well, he's earned it, and you're given an extra opponent to gun for. Also, if you've tangled against any of these opponents before and taken them down or vice versa, they will be named your Revenge Rivals. You can unlock achievements when you even the score with these rivals, and if you tangle with them enough, the rival is upgraded to arch rival, then nemesis.

No, Live Revenge doesn't revolutionize online racing or anything, but the added achievements from taking out rivals, as well as the added incentive of smashing into some scrubby teen that took you out last week, is immensely satisfying. Being able to track your rivals in the online menu lets you keep tabs on your nemeses and makes Burnout Revenge more than just a log-on-and-race experience.

Save and Share is a feature that has potential in terms of creating an online community for Burnout. After each single-player World Tour race, a replay begins. You can fast-forward through the entire race and begin recording a clip of up to 30 seconds in length at any point. Then you can save the clip to your hard drive and upload it to EA's servers. From there, your friends and Revenge Rivals can view your awesomeness on the road and you can do the same with their uploaded clips. What's more, EA will keep tabs of the top 20 downloaded clips and also run contests for the best crashes and takedowns. It may not sound like a big deal, but Save and Share is right in line with Microsoft's goal to make the 360 a true online console with an online community. A lot of developers could take a page from these features. Imagine in Fight Night Round 3 if you had the ability to keep tabs of your online rivals, especially since EA made such a big deal about the new rivalry feature in the game. Look for a lot of future titles to make similar strides forward in online play.